Fireseek 8 (cont):  2:00pm  When we are all back together, Ahb announces that she is very low on spells.  Tarva suggests that this would be a good time to use the wand of Cure Light she purchased.  Rowan announces that she also has a wand of Cure Light spells.  Tarva says why don't we use about half of mine, then switch to yours?  So they do.
On Rowan, for 9, 11, 9, 10, 8, 11, 8, and 8; using eight shots for 74 hp, restoring all of Rowan's down 70.
On Arvee for 6, 4, 8, 9, 9, 7, 5, 4, 9, 9, 4, 6, 4, 7, and 10; using fifteen shots for 101 hp, restoring all but one of Arvee's down 102.
On Tarva for 9, 9, 5, 11, 11, 10, 8, and 9; using eight shots for 72 hp, restoring all of Tarva's down 71.
Having used 31 shots from Tarva's wand, we switched over to Rowan's.
On Ahb for 5, 9, 5, 10, 5, 6, and 7; using seven shots for 47 hp, restoring all of Ahb's down 43.
Ahb uses her cantrip Cure Minor Wounds once to heal the one point of damage Taizu had; and then four more times to heal four points from Darred, leaving him at down 1.

Ahb has been checking out the horn, as best as she can without touching it.  There is nothing discernable about it.  Tarva would like a Detect Evil cast on it, but doesn't think doing that on top of an unhallowed dias is a good idea.  

Ahb wants us to search out the rooms in this area, starting at this room with the dias.

2:30pm  People looking see nothing on or around the dias.  Darred is standing guard at one of the entrances (right-hand one from our entrance).  Taizu is checking out the whirlwind tapestry, with Tarva watching his back.  Glendon is checking out the monster tapestries, looking to see if anything is behind them, when suddenly he stops checking them out and instead wanders down a hallway (the one opposite our entrance) and out of sight.  Darred hears some faint shuffling sounds down the corridor he is watching, and comes in to tell the group.  Meanwhile Ahb is hearing muttering down the corridor (left-hand one from our entrance) she is watching.  Before Darred can say anything, Rowan asks him, "Darred, Glendon just went down that" points "hallway by himself; should he do that?"  "No," responds Darred, and then tells everyone that he's heard someone moving around.  "Everyone get on the dias," says Ahb, wanting the high ground for archery advantage.  And Darred announces, "I'm going after Glendon."  Taizu hasn't responded to Ahb's directive, but is still staring at the tapestry, so Tarva reaches out and shakes his shoulder, "Taizu, Ahb wants us to go up the dias."

0:  Taizu in a surprise round slugs Tarva, barehanded, for 7sub; Tarva yells, "Taizu's possessed!" and goes full defensive.

1:  Taizu sits down with his back to the tapestry; Tarva continues, "Ahb, Taizu's confused, not possessed.  Can you cure or dispel it?"

Meanwhile, Darred has caught up with Glendon, who has wandered, seemingly aimlessly.  When Darred grabs him, he stops, but doesn't respond.  Darred slaps him, and Glendon snaps back to normal, wants to know how he got there.  Darred says, let's go back and Glendon agrees.  But as soon as Darred lets go, Glendon wanders off further from the room the group is in. 

Back in the main room, Arvee has come over to Taizu and pulled him to his feet.  As 'thanks', Taizu slugs Arvee.  Arvee then fails his grapple attempt on Taizu.  But in the confusion, Tarva manages to grab and restrain Taizu's right arm, telling Arvee to grab the other one. 

Darred grabs Glendon in a "come along" hold and marches him back to the group.  The arrive at the top of the dias jsut in time for Darred to be the only one besides Ahb who notices, out of the hallway from which Ahb heard mutterings, a large skeletal bear walk out.  As the rest of the group (perhaps except Glendon and Taizu) notice this, it is joined by three others

1: (After a momentary memory lapse) Ahb Turns Undead and causes all four skeletons to disintigrate. 

We all hear a "Hell" from the corridor, and then the sound of someone hurridly running away.  Arvee activates his boots and runs to and down that corridor after her.  Rowan runs after Arvee, easily catches up to him, then paces him instead of dashing ahead.  At the end of that corridor is a left-hand turn into the long stairs we fought the Gnolls on.  Arvee and Rowan see, from the top, a female human turning left at the bottom.  She has on a dark ochre cloak, with an air sigil.  They start down the stairs after her.

Taizu is trying to break free of Tarva (now that Arvee isn't helping to hold him) and succeeds, dashing down the corridor the way that Rowan and Arvee went.  "Shit!" says Tarva, taking a step after him, but then resigning herself to it and taking up a guard position, on top of the alter, to watch two other corridors.

Arvee and Rowan reach the bottom the stairs, turn left, go through the broken door into the octagonal room, see their quarry running down the hallway to their right, and continue chasing.   They catch up about 70' past the alcove (where the acolytes and horses are).

1:  Rowan hits cleric for 11, misses; Arvee tells cleric to surrender; cleric misses Rowan; Arvee hits cleric for 18 subdue, knocks her unconscious.

120 ep. 
Lysette makes second level!
Neva makes second level!

Darred lets Glendon go.  Glendon grabs his three-part staff and runs after Taizu.  Taizu and Glendon catch up to where Arvee and Rowan are trussing the unconscious cleric.  They help carry her back up to the rest of the group, still waiting in the dias room.  Surprisingly, neither acolyte heard any of this, or at least didn't come to investigate if they did.

3:00pm  All back together (with Taizu complaining under his breath about never getting a chance to try that spell out).  Darred cuts the Air Elemental sigil off of the female cleric's robes, sees plate mail underneath.  Ahb wants us all to go to the bedroom.  Using a cloth, Tarva picks the horn up and carries it into the bedroom, where she then holds it in place with the cloth while strapping it to the back of her pack.  Arvee picks each unconscious body up under one arm and brings them along.  Rowan and Glendon stay outside, at the ends of the hallway.  Taizu, joined by Darred, are searching the bedroom.  The main items of interest are papers on top of, and in the drawers of, the room's desk.  Tarva, as ususal, watching their backs while they concentrate.  Ahb and Arvee go downstairs to check on the acolytes, horses, and Air Guards.

[Careful verification of this section would be appreciated.]
3:20pm  From the papers (he started reading while Darred was still searching the rest of the room) and espeically from Fackish's (whose bedroom this is) diary, Taizu learns that: Fackish was in charge as the head cleric; Choranth was the second-in-command - presumably our just-captured female; Graud was her half-orc lover; Kelliad was the captain of the guard, to whom Fackish intended to give a "sword of air".   "Yan-Fee-Bon" {???]  The outer fount can only be entered by someone with the blessing of a Greater Key.  There is a separate Greater Key for each door.  Each Temple leader carries one Key.  Tessiman is the leader of the Fire Temple.  All the Temples are in mutual competition, conducting undeclared wars on all the others. Air is fairing the worst.  Strength of Air is so depleted that Fackish believes their only hope is to find and sell a rumored-of gemstone:  the Air Temple, along with rooms and passages to the east of it, all used to belong to, had been made by, Dwarves.  Fackish had found dwarven references to a huge diamond, named Tulian's Eye.

From a brief purvey of the guard schedules and the supplies accounts, Taizu believes that we have killed or captured exactly the complete population of the Air temple.  He leaves the desk to conduct a second, more careful search of the room, looking especially for secret doors.  Darred and (as usual, not wanting to slight her new-found skill) Tarva go through the papers in and on the desk more thoroughly, looking for anything Taizu's skimming might have missed; the only other potentially useful thing is that the Air Temple gets attacked a lot more from Fire than from Earth. Taizu's room search turns up no secret compartments.

3:30pm  After a brief time with the acolytes, Ahb and Arvee talk to the five captured Air Guards. Arvee offers them three choices: 1) they can convert to worshiping Pelor, and then be allowed to leave, find the nearest Pelor temple, and obtain positions as guards; 2) they can leave, Arvee will give them a half-hour start time, then come after them (he grins); 3) they can be executed.  They're not very happy about going out into the snowstorm, but end up picking option 1.  Arvee gives them 14 sp each.  Ahb leads them in prayers, writes notes to introduce them to Pelor Temple staff.  They're allowed to put on clothes (they don't have winter gear) and two bastard swords among the five of them, then escoreted outside and sent on their way.

4:00pm  Ahb and Arvee come back up to the bedroom.  Ahb decides that we'll spend the night in this room, leaving the horses below but bringing the acolytes up.  Tarva and Rowan go out to guard the hallway.  Ahb explains what she's done with the Air Guards.  Taizu is very upset, certain that sending outdoors without food or shelter is nothing but a slow way of killing them; that execution would have been more merciful.  Ahb responds by telling Taizu hinceforth he is in charge of prisoners and the moral dilemmas of making decisions about them.  Taizu says, "Fine," and goes down, with Darred, to tell the acolytes to pack and come upstairs.

[Careful verification of this section would be appreciated.]
Glendon and Arvee, overseen by Ahb, wake the female cleric and begin questioning her.  As usual, he starts by asking questions he already knew the answers to, to check on the questionee's truthfulness.  Unfortunately there has been no occasion for Taizu, Darred, and Tarva to relate what they learned from the papers to anyone else, and none of those three are in the room, so he can't use that additional information.  He does ask general questions about the Air Temple personnel, sometimes throwing in a morale-breaker, "oh, he's dead."  Then he homes in on the subject he considers most important: captives.  Choranth says that captives are kept in the Pit as a waiting area.  Klangoran is the master of the Pit.  The Pit's guardians are gargoyles.  The adjacent temples in the circle are Fire and Earth.  She thinks Fire is more powerful than Earth, doesn't know anything about Water.  Air hasn't been getting its fair share of prisoners, so they haven't been able to keep up the sacrifices, which is part of why they're in such poor shape.
She starts singing.  Glendon tells her to stop, then Arvee slaps her hard, but she keeps singing.  Her head starts bobbing in time with her song.  Arvee hits to subdue and knocks her out.  The singing stops, but the bobbing continues and becomes more pronounced.  Arvee administers a coup de grace and kills her.  This does stop the bobbing.  It also splatters gore and blood everywhere.

4:15pm  With Cloranth's dead body to 'inspire' him, they next interrogate the fighter.  After getting similar answers to those from the clericess, Kelliad gives his opinion that Fire is the strongest of the four Temples.  Claims to Hazen, Canon of Rao, high cleric at Veluna.  There is a statue room down the hall [???relevance???], clearly left over from the original Dwarvish owners / builders of this site.  He doesn't know how many gargoyles are guarding the Pit; has never seen more than three at once, can't tell the apart.  When asked about the tapestries and their effects on people, he responds dryly that this is, after all a Temple of Madness.  He shows no signs of entering into a frenzy.

4:30pm  Darred, Taizu, Lysette, and Neva come upstairs.  Ahb calls everyone together in the hallway (the bedroom holding an alert prisoner, and also being rather messy, now), and pulls Rowan and Tarva in from the ends of the hall to also take part.  Taizu brings everyone up to date with what he's learned from the papers.  Glendon remarks on where this confirms what both prisoners responded with to his questions.  Then goes on with the new information he extracted from them, and that Cloranth went into her frenzy and Arvee had to kill her.

Ahb still wants us to check out the rest of the immediate area before we camp for the night.  Very close to a look-but-don't-touch  attitude: hoping to find things out (so they won't surprise us), but without getting involved in any more major fights today.  We go back to the balcony room first, where some of us remember seeing some scroll cases.  Ahb, as the shortest - thus least likely to be noticed from any other rooms with views - takes the (it turns out) two brass scroll cases from the table beneath the window, then goes out the door onto the balcony.   In addition ot our previous hurried impression of a volcanic lake with a central island, she now sees that there are bridges spanning the lake between the caldera's rim and the island.  Also that there are towers worked into the surface of the rock of the central peak.  She can see two bridges, four towers, which are 70' high (the peak is much higher).  She brings the scroll cases back into the hallway and opens them.  The first contains an in-Dwarvis treatise on volcanoes.  The second, also in Dwarvise, by one Tolien Saltheart, is a report on the Dwarven exodus from this site.  It talks about hiding some artifacts and items of importance, and abandoning others, but gives no details as to where the hidden ones were hidden.

The other previously glanced at room in this hallway appeared to be a storeroom.  It still does, although it seems to be running low on food staples and supplies.

We find Cloranth's bedroom, 25' x 25' with a large circular bed.  Centered over it, 8' above the bed, is a 2&1/2' diameter orange ball of swirling light, with shards of bones sticking through it.  A small bookcase contains treatises on Air Elementals, or on Worship of Evil Deities; ten books in all.

5:30pm  Taizu finds a secret door in the wardrobe in the clericess's bedroom.  It's a small door which, when he opens it, leads onto into a secret compartment containing a box.  Taking the box out into the hallway, we see that it is made of iron, with ivory and silver inlay.  Taizu doesn't detect any traps on it, but does say that it has a very intricate lock, which he spends quite a while on before he opens it.  Inside are: a necklace in pearl and silver; matching bracelets (thus also in pearl and silver), and a pair of pearl earrings. 

6:00pm  We explore the other nearby halls and rooms (all the ones leading directly off the dias room. The only thing of any interest was one room roughly 25' x 25' x25' which had a (short) tower inside it, with a wooden ladder attached to the tower.

7:00pm  Back at Fackish's bedroom, Tarva wonders out loud if perhaps Cloranth's bedroom - upsetting orange ball and all - might be a better place to spend the night, since it isn't blood-spattered.  Darred offers to clean up Fackish's room, and Ahb accepts, so Darred does, casting ??? Prestidigitation and using it, round by round, to clean the surfaces of the room. 
Taizu casts Detect Secret Door and wanders through the upstairs rooms, for a double check. In the dias room, on top of the dias, he discovers one on the very top of the dias.  He tells Ahb, but makes no attempt to open it tonight.  
Tarva offers to find out which of our booty items are magic; gathers it all together in piles, then casts Detect Magic and picks out the following (well, she didn't actually Detect Magic on the scrolls, but they're listed here as a convenience)::

greataxe		air dias orc
alabaster: 8" long wand: carving praying		air dias cleric
iron wand 10": etchings spikes, thorns		air dias cleric
scroll: raise dead & cure critical		air dias cleric
plate armor under robes		air dias cleric
shield		air dias cleric
key 1		air dias cleric
horn		air dias
half plate, black		air dias fighter
large steel shield		air dias fighter
longsword		air dias fighter
cloak		air dias fighter
pouch of dust		clericess
scroll: bless, magic weapon, doom, cure moderate		clericess
scroll: endurance, augury, darkness		clericess
key 3 wierdly shaped		clericess
longsword w/ silver circle		altar compartment
hide armor		orc chieftan
double axe		orc chieftan

8:00pm  Settling down.  [Kelliad gets his first good look at Tarva (the previous time, she was at the foot of the dias and he was being beaten up by a dwarf) and announces that he'd like to be questioned by her.  Tarva suggests that we gag him.]  Dinner has been served.  Going into night watches.  Get throught the night.

Fireseek 9: 
8:00am  Taizu finds no traps on the dias's secret door, which is set in the floor of the top of the dias.  However, he cannot open it - it is simply too heavy.  After Arvee also fails to open it, Darred casts Bull Strength on both Arvee and Rowan, and they manage to get it open.  Inside we find a longsword with a silver circle emblem.

Going back to Cloranth's room, Ahb announces that the glowing orange ball is a Spirit Sphere, which boosts the abiltiy for a cleric to control undead.  Ahb performs a Turn Undead on it and it vanishes, raining bone fragments over the bed.  We clean up the bones (shake off the bed covering) and move the horses and collected booty up here.  We also move Kelliad, still tied up, into here, and leave Neva and Lysette to watch over everything.  Because she doesn't want anyone else getting ahold of and blowing the Air Elemental horn, Tarva is still carrying it strapped to her pack.  Because he doesn't want to leave -- what he presumes is a magical "air" sword intended by Fackish for Kelliad -- anywhere near Kelliad, Taizu is carring it strapped to his backpack.  He also retrieves anything of value that had been on his horse, rather than leave them behind.

9:00am  Starting in the 'tower' room, we're goiing to go after the Earth Temple.  The group as a whole ranges from convinced to resigned to the need to trash all four temples, plus probably the Outer and Inner Founts. Some had suggested taking on Fire first - attacking the strongest while we ourselves were not depleated; but Ahb expressed the hope that by the time we got around the circle to Fire, some (at least) of the company could have gone up a level and be actually stronger, not weaker, than now. 
Our matching order, for as long as the passageways are wide enough to permit it is: Arvee front left, Darred front right; Rowan behind Arvee; Glendon behind Darred; Ahb behind Rowan, Tarva behind Glendon; Taizu as rear guard.
From the tower room, we enter a large cave.  Ahead, Darred hears a sliding / hissing sound.  Arvee thinks that the area off to the left is unstable, wants us all to stay right.  Then, beyond the range of the light, Arvee sees something approaching.

1: Glendon puts on his night vision goggles, says, "Something ahead of us, not sure what it is, coming towards us", and cocks his crossbow; Ahb reserves for an attack; Darred casts Mage Armor on himself; Rowan takes her sword out; charging us is a nine-headed purply-colored hydra, it breathes Cold for 67 points to Rowan, 33 to Darred, Glendon, and Arvee; Ahb casts Sword Stream on hydra for 14; Taizu casts Resistance on Tarva; Tarva shoots hydra for 9, 9; Arvee charges hydra, hitting for 16.

2: Glendon shoots for 5, then tumbles past the hyrda; Darred casts Slow from the wand, then flies up to the ceiling on the left side; Rowan casts Protection from Elements::Cold on herself; hydra hits on Arvee for 10, 15, 11,  and 9, moves 5' and strikes at Darred (on the ceiling!) for 7; Ahb casts Harrier (will last through round 10) which attacks hydra and hits for 1; Taizu casts Resistance on Ahb; Tarva criticals for 23, hits for 8; Arvee activates his boots, moves 5' to flank the hyrda with Darred, hits, kills.

Ahb Heals Rowan, Darred, Glendon, and Arvee.

343 ep.

Having a lead scout seems like a good idea again.  Taizu uses his wand to cast Invisibility on Glendon.  Glendon searches ahead, with instructions to return as soon as he encounters either an enemy or a passageway juncture.  Instead of waiting for him to scout and come back, we start after him immediately.  A short distance ahead Glendon enters a medium sized room with a single opening at the far end, but with wooden stairs leading up to an opening overhead.  Going through the far passageway to a bend, he can hear some low volume mutterings. There are a few bones and other debris directly below the ceiling opening.  As the rest of the group arrives at this room, he starts up the stairs, which squeak loudly.

0: Arvee charges the stairs.

1: Rowan reserves for a target; Ahb reserves for the stairs being free; Arvee runs past Glendon (whom he can't see) to the top (Glendon isn't pushed off the stairs), finds an orc, hits, kills, cleaves, kills, cleaves, kills; Ahb (stairs look empty) runs up to the top (Glendon dodges her); Glendon gets to the top and in, sees a bedroom, only this one entrance/exit, a rough bed, a small shrine, three male orcs (plus three more male ex-orcs and Arvee), twelve females, six children, one kobold, he takes out his staff and reserves to keep any orcs from leaving the room; Darred goes up the stairs and into the room; Taizu draws his bow and advances to the far opening to cover its passageway - reserves to shoot; Tarva goes there also, tosses her light stone to where the passageway bends, reserves to shoot.

2: Rowan goes up the stairs, to the orcs, kills, kills; orcs cower; Arvee moves 5', kills, cleaves, kills; Ahb to kobold, kills; Glendon goes back down the stairs, tells Taizu and Tarva, "I'm going to check out the passageway, don't shoot until I'm back" (being invisible still); Darred uses his rapier, kills; Taizu and Tarva hear louder voices down the passageway.

3: Rowan moves to the bed, kills; orcs cower; Arvee moves 5', kills, cleaves, kills, move 10', kills; Ahb searches the kobold body; Glendon goes down the passageway and past bend, can hear agitation in the oncoming voices;  Darred kills, tells ??? to "get up"; Taizu and Tarva reserve for Glendon returning.

4: Rowan kills, kills; orcs cower; Arvee kills; Ahb tells Arvee to destroy the shrine; Glendon sees seven orcs coming at him, one bigger than the rest, moves back to behind Taizu and Tarva, and tells them; Darred runs downstairs; Taizu reserves for a clear shot; Tarva shoots for 6, 9, kills; Taizu shoots for 9, 4, kills.

5: Rowan boots downstairs, runs up to Tarva and Taizu, bashes into still-invisible Glendon; Arvee destroys shrine; Ahb starts down stairs; Glendon turns visible striking at chief, but missing; orcs all miss Glendon; Darred moves to the entranceway where we came in, watches our backs; Tarva shoots chief for 7, 9; Taizu shoots chief for 4, 11.

6: Rowan moves up, criticals, kills; Arvee pushes through Glendon, knocking Glendon into Rowan; Glendon hits chief for ?; orcs all hit at Arvee, landing blows for 3, 9; Tarva shoots a regular orc for 4, 6, kills; Taizu hits chief for 11, 8.

7: Rowan hits for 9, kills, takes a 5' step, hits for 10, kills; Arvee hits for 18, kills, cleaves, kills.

114 ep.

[No healing?]

Drag the bodies up the stairs and dump them with the others. Search the bodies and the room.  Find (and taken or carried by): bloodstone (carried: Arvee), 50' silk rope (Glyndon), grappling hook (Glyndon), portable battering ram (acolytes), dagger (Darred), dagger (Darred), silver platter (acolytes), chain shirt, lantern, small steel mirror, 10' chain, six potions of light kelly green [Cure Moderate] (with a similar potion taken from Kelliad, this is enough to give all seven of us one potion each), twelve hide armors, six double axes, twleve javelans one trident, a smoky grey potion (carried: Ahb), 78gp (carried: Rowan), chieftan's magic hide armor (acolytes), chieftan's magic double axe (acolytes). 
Darred casts a Detect Magic on the entire pile of booty, finding out that the chieftan's armor and axe are, but nothing else.  We decide to abandon all but the magic, potions, bloodstone, platter, coins, and battering ram -- letting individuals take for themselves anything they'd like from the abandoned items.  (In  the above list, anything marked "(acolytes)" was taken back to them for safekeeping; anything marked "(carried: <who>)" is part of the group treasure but being carried by that indicated person; anything marked "(<who>)" was abandoned by the group and picked up by that individual.
Since we haven't gone very far at all, Glendon volunteers to carry all the "(acolytes)"-marked items back to where they're staying with the horses and Kelliad.

[Careful verification of this section would be appreciated.]
9:15am  Taizu casts Invisibilty on Glendon again.  Glendon scouts on in front, gets to a major junction point, J-1, with passagesways going left, straight, right.  Straight into an 18' high room, with a wooden platform along the left wall, and a very strong stench: an indoor outhouse.  Back to J-1 and go left.  Passageway widens up and contains six beds.  There is also a second portable battering ram here, which we don't bother with.   The passage continues and goes down a flight of stairs.  At the bottom is J-2, with choices of left, straight, or right (or, of course, back).  Go straight.  Reach a branch, Y-1, left branch is large (wide), right is narrow.  To the left is a drawing of an orc skull, a hammer, and an arrow pointing along the passageway.  We go left.  Passageway ends in doubled doors with dragonheads on top of hammerheads (very dwarvish).  Arvee knocks on the door.  There is no response.  We decide to explore other passageways and come back here later.  Return to Y-1 and take the right branch.  80'  later it opens up into a medium sized cavern with a slooping floor (we're at the top) and other entrances.  Also, there are four orcs at the bottom.

1: Arvee charges the orcs, kills, cleaves, kills.

2: Rowan moves to beside Arvee, strikes and kills the third orc; Taizu moves to point-blank range, shoots the last orc for 12; Tarva shoots, kills.

28 ep.

We find 33gp on them.  There are two other passageways out of this room (henceforth: "4 Orcs").  The right passageway takes us back to the right branch of J-2 (at the foot of the stairs).  We return to 4 Orcs and take the other passageway.  It branches, Y-3, just before a door, with the right branch going almost straight, and the left branch being a very sharp almost 180°.  We go right.

0: Darred exclaims, "Look!  A wire!" just as Arvee steps on it and bells (alarm, presumably) ring.  We hear noises now from behind us, up the left branch of Y-3; those that understand Orcish hear almost intelligible statements such as "turn it more."

1: Rowan moves to the side away from the noise-filled branch; Taizu moves to the corner; Ahb moves up that branch all out to 60', sees a metal barrier with arrow slots, shifting so as to block the passage; through an arrow slot an orc shoots Ahb with a crossbow and hits for 9; Tarva runs up 60'; Glendon runs up, then jumps over the barrier to land in the middle of four orcs holding crossbows; Darred casts Flaming Sphere to appear on the right side behind the barrier, kills an orc; Arvee runs at the barrier, crashes into it, takes 6 subdual.

2: Rowan reaches the barrier; Taizu takes out a Tanglefoot Bag, runs up to the barrier, leaps up to spike the Bag onto the other side; Ahb reaches barrier; orcs all miss; Tarva reserves for a target; Glendon hits an orc, kills; helped by Rowan and Ahb, Arvee moves the barrier back 10', now it is no longer blocking the entire passageway.

3: Taizu moves to the left side of the barrier, shoots orc, kills; Tarva to beside Taizu, shoots, kills; Glendon hits for 7, kills; Darred directs his flaming sphere against the last orc, kills. 

63 ep.

[no healing?]

The engineering types are very impressed with the barrier.  7' wide, 10' long, very heavy, excellent craftsmanship, repeating crossbows.   Desire to take it with us is squelched by realiziation of how much it would slow us down, plus difficulty of getting it up or down stairs, plus likelihood of some passageways being too narrow for it.

[Careful verification of this section would be appreciated.]
10:00am  We go back to the dragon / hammer doors. Taizu notices something about the lock: there's a secondary trap.  This is going to be a very difficult lock to pick. Most everyone will stay way back.  Tarva will be closest - not only because she would insist on it anyway, but also so she can sing to improve Taizu's lock-picking abiltiy.  Ahb, hoping that it might give her some information she could pass along to Taizu and make his task easier, casts Find Trap, but doesn't learn anything useful.  Ahb then casts Shield Other on Taizu, so that if he does get hurt, half the damage will come to her instead.  Taizu casts Resistance on Tarva and himself.  Tarva begins singing Inspire Competence to Taizu.  Taizu first successfully applies a Disable Device to the secondary trap (which would have hit Taizu with a delayed poison if triggered), then successfully unlocks the doors.  Opens them.
[Unless otherwise stated, all the ceilings are 20' high and all the doors are stone.]  Ten foot wide corridor running straight into the distance and out of sight.  We go in, and Taizu locks the doors behind us. About 20' down on the left is a doorway, with a door but no lock.  Opening it, we see a 20' x 20' room with a 5' diameter font held up 2' off the ground by four marble legs.  The entire font appears to have been carved from one single gemstone, possibly an emerald, possibly some other gemstone.  Each of the corners of the room holds a large stone statue of a dwarf holding a weapon. There are symbols on each of a hammer and an anvil.  An anvil with a hammer superimposed in front of it (as here) is the symbol for Moradin, the God of Dwarves.  Arvee thinks we're in a Moradin Temple.
Taizu, recalling the last time we encountered larger-than-life stone statues of dwarves holding weapons -- back in Durgeddon's Keep -- wonders if these statues are also mechanically or magically set to attack intruders.  Ahb steps into the room and casts Detect Magic, then slowly scans the entire room.  The statues are not magic, the font is, of school Illusion.
20' down the hall is another door on the left.  In front of it, on the floor, are two orc-shaped grease-spots; almost as if they had been burnt into the floor's rock.  Taizu searches for traps on the door and finds none.  Concerned, he repeats the search in a very concentrated manner, taking twenty minutes in all.  Still finds none.  Arvee goes to open the door but finds it locked.  Taizu unlocks the door, it opens into a 60' long, 25' wide hall, with side halls 40' from the door, 10' wide and extending (although we can't see this yet) 25' on each side of the central hall -- the entire room thus taking the shape of a cross.  All the walls have tapestries in silver and dark blue.  Running down the center of the first part of the hall is a 10' long, 4' wide, 2.5' high table.  There is a cloth covering the table, also in silver and dark blue, and resting on it are six spheres of jeweled silver.  Taizu checks for traps yet again, this time not on the door but on the doorway, but finds nothing.  Arvee steps into the room; there is a flash, and he takes 9 points of cold damage from a Glyph of Warding.  [no healing?]  Ahb casts Detect Magic to look for additional traps, among other things.  All six spheres regiseter as magic, but nothing else does.  Taizu casts Detect Secret Passage and starts checking all the walls and floor.  Darred checks for traps on the spheres, spending time to check each one separately, looking for both mechanical and magical, but finds nothing.  Tarva reminds everyone that back in the treasure room of the Giant's Lair, Glyphs were hidden under the magical items they were trapping, making those traps impossible to detect.  We decide to leave the spheres for later; Taizu relocks the door and we go down the hall.
15' further and there are stairs going up to a room 60' wide and 70' deep.  There is a large altar 15' square and 10' tall with steps on one side, with two large gems [?somewhere?].   The wall s all around contain carved images of dwarves with hammers; the floor is of tiles of interlocking grey and white hammers.   The far (southeast) wall has large dwarven runes on it.  There are stairs in the east corner rising to a platform in the center of the southeast wall.  At the platform's height is a stone door slab carved with more dwarven runes.